


when all those shadows almost killed your light

by n00blici0us



Category: NCIS
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode: s02e10 Chained, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-23
Updated: 2012-03-23
Packaged: 2017-11-02 10:38:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/368051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/n00blici0us/pseuds/n00blici0us
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>what happens when Gibbs opens the car door, aka Tony tries to deal with the aftermath</p>
            </blockquote>





	when all those shadows almost killed your light

The smell of gunpowder lingered in the air, mixing with the sting of fine blood spray—a whiff of iron in the nostrils. Tony sat in the car, his head hanging down, sensing rather than seeing Gibbs approach and open the car door. “I really liked him,” he said, because he didn’t know what else to say when he had just blown a man’s brains out. Jeffrey had been _right there_ , mere inches from him, his breath ghosting across Tony’s ear, his hand squeezing Tony’s shoulder and the sleek blade of the knife caressing his cheek. Tony had fingered the snub-nosed revolver in his hands, held his breath, and raised the gun up and over his shoulder, pulling the trigger just as he felt Jeffrey turn the knife towards his neck—and not a moment sooner.

Tony finally looked up, squinting past the bright sunlight to stare at Gibb’s face. “Yeah. Yeah, I can see that,” Gibbs replied. Then Gibbs’s voice gentled. “Come on diNozzo,” Gibbs said, “Let’s get you out of there.”

Tony let Gibbs take the gun from him, stepping out of the car on suddenly wobbly legs. “Hey boss?” Tony asked, not quite sure what he was even asking.

“Don’t worry about it, diNozzo,” Gibbs said. “I’ll take care of it.” He sat them both down on the asphalt and pulled out his cell phone.

Good, Tony thought, because he had no idea what was going on anymore. All he knew was one moment he was identifying himself to Jeffrey as a federal agent, hoping that Gibbs had his location from his phone calls, and the next—well the next minute Jeffrey had turned from a mild-mannered, stumbling social misfit into a calculating killer. It had been disconcerting to know how badly he had been conned.

“Ducky, I have Tony,” Gibbs said. “Meet us down here. Got a body.” He snapped the phone shut authoritatively.

“Did you ever see _The Defiant Ones_?” Tony asked, staring at his hands. He hadn’t been on this side of a shooting in a long time.

“What?” Gibbs asked. “Have I ever seen what, diNozzo?”

“Sydney Poitier and Tony Curtis at their finest. Chained together, trying to escape from a lynch mob. They had to build trust together. The Joker went back to find Cullen. Was I Tony Curtis, or was Jeffrey?” He felt disconnected from his body, in a dreamy state where someone else had shot and killed Jeffrey White. He kept flexing his fingers, smearing the splotch of blood on his trigger finger and rubbing at it compulsively.

Gibbs put a warm hand over his. “Tony,” he said quietly, “It wasn’t your fault. Jeffrey… was a serial killer. He was the one who killed the three men before, not Lane. He killed Lane too and he would have killed you. You had to do it. It was a good shooting.”

“Yeah,” Tony said, fingers stilling under Gibbs’s hand.

“Listen to me,” Gibbs said, more insistently. “If I had known, I never would have approved this operation.”

“I know,” Tony said quietly, and it was true—he did know. Gibbs took the safety of his team very seriously; as it was, he had barely approved of Tony’s plan of going undercover as a fellow inmate to get Jeffrey to lead them to his stash. Speaking of—“Where’s the stuff?”

Gibbs didn’t answer for a long pause before—“It’s not here. Tonka trucks, chairs and empty storage containers is all we found.”

“Dammit!” Tony had tried so fucking hard to cut him a deal and it had all been a ploy? Two dead bodies and no Iraqi antiquities.

“Hey,” Gibbs jostled his shoulder. “Good job on the phone calls. Should’ve known you’d be resourceful enough to pick up a way to leave us breadcrumbs. Kate says thanks, by the way.”

Tony cracked a small smile, both for Gibbs’s praise and at the thought of Kate hearing his description of the lost dog, but even the uncharacteristic approbation couldn’t free him from this sinkhole of blame. Jeffrey had seemed so damned nice. Tony felt like he couldn’t breathe with his guilt weighing him down. It was that moment that kept drawing him back—his finger tightening on the trigger, the recoil of the gun, and the blast of sound that erupted in the car. And in that moment he had killed Jeffrey—kill or be killed, he supposed, but why didn’t that ease his conscience.

The sound of tires on asphalt drew Tony out of his introspection.

“Ducky’s here,” Gibbs announced unnecessarily. He heaved himself up with a groan. “I’m too old to be sitting on the ground.” Extending a hand towards Tony, Gibbs said, “Come on diNozzo, up and at ‘em. Kate’s done arresting the buyer; Ducky’s here to check you and the body out, and McGee has probably pissed his pants telling off the Assistant Secretary of State. We deal with them first. The rest, we can tackle tomorrow.”

As if on cue, Kate emerged from behind the car, slamming the door shut. “Tony!” she called, “Mangy brown hair? I don’t have mangy brown hair!”

“I was improvising Kate, describing a lost dog, remember?”

“If you ever describe me like that, you can be sure that you’ll be hurting somewhere you don’t want to hurt.”

Tony stood up, clutching Gibbs’s hand for one extra second, letting Gibbs’s warmth seep into him before he straightened completely, disentangling himself in the process. “Noted,” he said, touching his finger to his head in a small salute to her.

“My boy,” said Ducky as he approached them, placing a comforting arm on Tony’s shoulder. “Let’s get you taken care of.”

Tomorrow Tony would have to deal with the paperwork of discharging his weapon. He would have to give an account of the shooting, have the review board pore over the entire incident. It would be a big mess and he might not ever drop the weight of his guilt over killing the man who had seemed so _nice_ , an albatross hanging around his neck, threatening to strangle him. But Tony knew he had done what he had to do and Gibbs had declared it good and that’s all he had to cling to right now.

The rest could wait until tomorrow.

_No one ever treated me like you did_ …


End file.
